Cedar Rapids – 7.9

“Cute,” was the word I heard most often from the decidedly older crowd leaving the Friday night $3 movies at the Hopkins Cinema, and that struck me as just about perfect. Like an Adam Sandler movie, it was sweet-spirited, with the bad guys not really being bad, just pompous. Sure, no one could be as naive as Tim Lippe, played adroitly by Ed Helms, but he was more the foil, the Pogo/Jerry Seinfeld around whom the more interesting characters revolved – none more wildly than John C. Reilly, who was beyond perfection as Dean Ziegler. Ann Heche and Isiah Whitlock were pretty good, too. The setting reminded me of Up in the Air, but where that hit a number of discordant notes, this was pitch-perfect throughout. And in every awkward scene, of which there were many, the director simply cut away before I started squirming.